"You'd spare me too?" Yunshu shot back.
Guyuan shook his head. "This lord is famous through the three realms for cherishing delicate creatures. Otherwise, why do you think you'd still be standing here, talking to me?"
He met her eyes at leisure, posture slack. "Work on your cultivation first. You're no match for them yet."
Yunshu smiled without a shred of warmth. "Thanks for the tip. Goodbye."
"Tch..." Guyuan's eyes narrowed. "What an ill-behaved little cat."
Ah, from far off, Ling Wu could see figures standing at the mountain's crest, clearly waiting to greet her and her master.
Seeing their stiff, upright postures, she felt wonderful all over.
A few days apart—surely her senior brothers missed her dearly.
So no sooner had she stepped off the cloud than she greeted them with her brightest smile.
"Senior brothers, it's been ages! Your little junior sister is back~"
But none of them so much as glanced at her. In perfect unison they bowed to her master. "Welcome home, Master."
Ling Wu kept her smile fixed. Next they'd greet her, surely?
She waited a long while. They treated her like she was invisible.
Ling Wu got good and angry about it. Unwilling to be this ignored, she edged right up in front of them. "Senior brothers! Your little junior sister is ALSO back!"
Their faces twitched; they exchanged looks, each expression differing.
Sixth Senior Brother spoke first—saying everything she least wanted to hear. "Why must you make such a fuss of yourself, junior sister? You're back; that's that. What do you want, drums and gongs?"
That bastard!
Once again her face slipped, and she cursed Songhe six ways to Sunday in her head.
She couldn't fathom it. What was wrong with Kunlun's feng shui that she and Sixth Senior Brother could never get along?
Night fell, and Ling Wu was still brooding.
She sat under the peach tree by the gate, chin in hand.
Why hadn't that demon managed to do Sixth Senior Brother in? Was this what they meant by "the wicked live a thousand years"?
The thought that he would ascend to immortality ahead of her made her chest ache. Who knew what he'd say to humiliate her then.
Speak of the devil. Just as she stood to find something to eat, Songhe's footsteps drew near.
His narrow eyes fixed on her. "You do have a talent for timing, junior sister."
Ling Wu understood perfectly: the man was settling accounts!
Kunlun had an unwritten rule: whichever senior brothers remained on the mountain were responsible for minding her. Reason being—she was young, weak, and in need of a guardian. If she got hurt or vanished, the first person her master called to account was whichever brother had been on the mountain that day.
On the day she went down to the mortal world, the others had long since scattered to their duties. Only she had been up here—and a gravely wounded Sixth Senior Brother.
He'd come over now—had her master blamed him?
She decided to play dumb, grinning breezily. "Timing? What timing, Sixth Senior Brother? I don't follow."
Her eyes rolled this way and that, her every thought written on her face.
Songhe snorted. "Playing the fool."
"Was the mortal realm fun? Happy to run into your master?" He had no intention of letting her off.
Guilty as sin, she still beamed. "What mortal realm? I don't follow. Meeting Master was pure chance. You know me, Sixth Brother—when I've nothing to do, I love wandering the mountain slopes!"
"Really? That day, Master searched all of Kunlun and never found a trace of you. Unless—" he arched a brow, "—your cultivation is far above Master's? That even he couldn't sense you."
Son of a—!
And here she'd thought meeting her master in the mortal realm was coincidence. He'd returned to Kunlun first, and only gone down looking for her?
A miscalculation, a miscalculation. She had no comeback now.
"With all that cleverness, you might spend it on cultivation instead. In time, you could go down to the mortal realm legitimately."
Ling Wu gave him a long, flat look. "You know perfectly well what my aptitude is, Sixth Brother."
Since when did he pivot to cultivation?
Songhe narrowed his eyes at her again, some unreadable feeling on his face. "Do you truly believe you have no talent?"
Ling Wu found that baffling.
All these years, her brothers had seen exactly what she was worth. If her aptitude were truly remarkable, they wouldn't have spent years calling her "dead last, dead last."
"Sixth Brother, I've heard of parents hoping their sons become dragons and daughters phoenixes, but never a brother hoping his junior sister ascends. If you really want the experience of raising someone, find yourself an immortal consort, have a child or two next year, and coach them. They might ascend faster than your junior sister!" She looked him dead in the eye as she said it, utterly earnest.
Songhe's composure cracked; his face twitched.
He looked at her the way one looks at a fool. "Spend your spare time feeding your brain, junior sister."
A normal person would have thought it through and spotted the flaw. But Ling Wu was no normal person; her mind ran on strange rails, and she was forever saying outrageous things.
Only afterward did it dawn on her: Songhe cultivated the Path of No Feeling. Telling him to have children was practically cursing his cultivation to ruin.
But anyone who knew the Path of No Feeling knew how feelings worked: the more you fled them, the harder they chased. You could preach severing all love till doomsday—and the day some moonlit beauty fell from the sky, it would shatter your dao-heart to powder.
She firmly believed Songhe's Path of No Feeling wouldn't last.
So Ling Wu replied, perfectly calm, "Sixth Brother, spend your free time chanting the Heart-Clearing Mantra. Wouldn't want to meet your ideal type some day, lose your footing, and wreck your cultivation."
Sure enough, Songhe's gaze sharpened instantly, his face full of probing.
"What is that supposed to mean, junior sister?"
Ling Wu said, "No need to hide it from me, Sixth Brother. The other day when I came to see you, that knotted button you were turning over in your hand—whose was it? That pattern, one look and you could tell it came off a woman's dress. Your final tribulation is nearly here. Don't stumble at the last step! Do have some sense!"
Songhe said nothing, only looked at her.
The look made her skin crawl.
She was about to speak when his laughter cut her off.
"And here I thought my junior sister could read heaven's secrets—that she had already calculated I wouldn't survive this tribulation. It was mere guesswork?" Songhe's smile didn't reach his eyes. "That button is the last keepsake left me by the mother of the mortal shell I wore, when I descended long ago to undergo a trial. What—does my junior sister take me for the sort of deviant who'd forget ethics entirely?"
Ling Wu clicked her tongue. Miscalculated again.
Honestly—who gazes at his own mother's button so tenderly? She'd seen the reluctance on his face and assumed it was some girl he loved and couldn't have.
Damn it all—romance had turned into family feelings! How was she supposed to poke him in the heart now?
She mourned, she sighed, and in the end all of it curdled into an awkward smile. "My mistake, my mistake. Good that there's no one. I was only worried about you, Sixth Brother—afraid your dao-heart might shatter and cost you your ascension forever."
"Ah, but Kunlun can't afford a second dead-last. Master prizes his face so much, Sixth Brother—don't make him lose it!" Shaking her head, Ling Wu changed the subject.
Songhe's gaze burned. "The sooner you open your eyes, junior sister, the better Master's mood will look."
Ling Wu was puzzled. "Open my eyes to what? Cultivation? Rest easy, Sixth Brother. Even if I can't ascend this life, with Master's patience he'll take me as his disciple again in the next. Who knows—next life I might have talent!"
"There will be no next life for you."
With that, Songhe, unwilling to argue further, strode off.